The community was technologically advanced, it was fairly self-contained without appearing isolated to those who traveled through the area, and especially to those who had business in town. Their electrical power was home-grown, suspicious if anyone really had a close look, but explainable using the justification of sustainability. Lucius noted that the geothermal power generation explained the lack of need for natural gas. They made their own methane to process to power the community’s city vehicles. They grew their own food, they managed their own livestock, and they had nineteen healthy colonies of bees scattered throughout their crops indicating that they employed none of the big agra chemical pesticides killing bee colonies around the rest of the country.
“G2?”
“Yes, Lucius. How may I be of assistance?”
“Do you have aerial photos of the Harmony community?”
“On the main screen. Is there any particular area you would like to focus on?” the A.I. inquired.
“Perhaps. Can you estimate how many structures have solar cells on their roofs?”
“It appears that all structures have some type of solar collectors installed.”
“Thank you, G2. That will be all.”
Sydney looked up from her datapad with a quizzical look.
“Nothing really, just that they are really something. They really are the community of the future, but without the asinine greed and corruption that permeates all levels of government most everywhere else. How’s it coming with you?” he asked.
“This Aidan, and his—girlfriend, I guess—would make great recruits. They’re both extraordinary, but if we get them both and they stay together, that kind of defeats the purpose of increasing genetic diversity, at least until their second generation,” Sydney replied.
“And they’d be only the second couple we’ve brought back. But the person I want to talk to is this Constance Little. Did you know she’s Bernice’s niece?” said Lucius.
“Peanut’s wife? No kidding?”
“I sent off a quick message to Bernice to see if she remembers Constance at all. I think these semi-hidden communities already have people with a similar mind set like ours all these years. I wouldn’t be surprised if we couldn’t find several hundred potential additions to our community within their communities. And with the hab due to go online in a matter of months, we have the room,” he said.
“That’s the feeling I’m getting. Digging into Aidan’s background, it looks like he would have fit in perfectly with Chris’ nucleus of friends in the beginning. He kind of reminds me of both Chuck and Peanut in temperament. What was Riley like? Obviously, we never met.”
Lucius paused a moment. “The original four were closer than brothers, all of them, except for Chuck, would be called nerds today. They met in high school, where Chris and Peanut sat at the top of all their classes, and strangely enough, Chuck was on the football team. Riley transferred into the school later when his father moved into town to take over his brother’s or grandfather’s shop; furniture, I think. Riley was into amateur radio—ham radio it was called. It didn’t take but a minute for them to become best friends. Riley’s accidental death on the moon hit them hard, there were only a dozen or so at the time; all closer than family because each of their lives depended on everyone else. Christopher’s stubbornness and quick anger are partially the result of Riley’s death. He really took it hard, and from what I can tell, he takes every death to heart. I can’t imagine what he would have done had I died in custody.”
Sydney shuddered. “At least Patricia has had a calming effect on him,”
“Raising Ben, too,” Lucius added.
“I’m thinking to contact this Aidan initially in some sort of written manner, in an online chat for example,” suggested Sydney.
“What’s your thinking?” asked Lucius.
“It’s more sterile, and it doesn’t give away any of our technology or anything specific about either of us.”
“Okay, I like that. I think it’s going to be hard enough doing this by remote control, so to speak, but it has to get done. It would be so much easier if we could work on Earth,” he said, catching the look on her face. “I know, I know. Chris would have my hide if I tried something like that. Anyway, I’m going to plow through some more of these files.”
“Me, too. I think I’m getting a good feel for Aidan,” Sydney said, turning back to her datapad.
They continued to go through the Harmony information. Lucius turned his attention to what looked like Constance’s right hand man, Silas Washington. Joined the Air Force as an electronics technician, specializing in advanced communications, then met Constance attending college on the G.I. Bill once he left the service. From the photos, he was tall, over six foot, slim and dark; he looked tough. Reading through Washington’s accomplishments, Lucius got the impression that he and Washington would have been fairly good friends had they met along the way.
An hour and a half later, when Lucius stood up to stretch, he offered to make coffee. Looking at the time, Sydney said she was hungry. When they made their way to the galley, they were surprised to find it empty. Lucius offered to “rustle up some grub” while Sydney poked around to see what everyone else was doing.
Sydney headed to the station’s Ops deck where she found two of the crew and their pilot, Brock, observing the others on screen, outside mounting the laser inside a small turret on the bottom of the exterior of the station.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Oh, hey. They’re almost done. How goes the homework?” Larry asked.
“Actually, it’s coming along pretty well. Lucius was about to make us something to eat. He sent me to see if you guys want to join us.”
“That would be great. Can he wait about twenty minutes? The guys should be back inside by then,” Larry replied.
“No problem. I’ll let him know.”
When she returned to the galley, Lucius’ face lit up, happy to prepare a meal for everyone.
Less than a half hour later the others started drifting into the galley. Lucius distributed plates with salmon over rice smothered in a savory sauce, surprising everyone.
“Holy crap! I could eat like this every day!” Stirling exclaimed.
Conversation was very light through the meal, as Lucius told the story of his being a cook for the Tuskegee Airmen and how he met Christopher’s father when he walked onto the airbase wanting to sign up as an aircraft mechanic. He regaled them with amusing stories from training and when they were deployed to Italy while they ate.
Once they were finished, the station crew cleaned up the galley. Sydney and Lucius returned to their research while the others began to load the calibration and aiming software for the newly mounted laser. The laser assembly was a clever amalgam of the laser and two telescopes. The main telescope was equipped with a sensor extremely sensitive to the high and low x-ray band, the other, a sighting scope for extremely accurate aiming of the laser.
Once the laser control software was tested, Lamont sent word to the colony to shut down the laser sending the signal to Earth and he aimed the station’s laser at the same location in Colorado, programming the console to keep the laser aimed at the same spot even as the Earth rotated. He set the laser to send out the number Pi to ten decimal places and programmed the sensor console to alert G2 to any returned signal.
Sydney and Lucius adjourned to the station’s lounge and continued to read through the data files on Harmony, occasionally putting them up on the room’s big screen to discuss a bit of information while the others were off relaxing with an extremely cutthroat game of poker.
While he was taking a break from his reading, Lucius marveled at the size of the station. There were rooms and berths for at least twenty-five to thirty crew and guests, making it a perfect collection point for recruits. Before they left the colony, Peanut covered the recent upgrades, assuring him that he and Sydney were perfectly safe once they arrived. He couldn’t help but wond
er what the government’s response was going to be once they caught on to their siphoning off more black folks to live in the colony. What would happen if whites demanded that if they couldn’t go into space, no one could?
In Lucius’ mind, the conflict could only escalate as time went by. There would be no lessening of tensions, but if the colony maintained vastly superior technology, they would still be able to call the shots. But more than being in a Cold War with Earth, with America, the colony was poised to move on even further. They were truly space men and women, people who had slipped the bonds of Planet Earth, and looking forward. Peanut and others were doing serious work in faster than light travel. The science departments were continuously investigating if the colony needed ground-based installations to support the community, and their livable real estate was on the verge of doubling.
When he rejoined Sydney, she looked up, “Tired? Otherwise I’d like to go over a couple of things with you.”
“Sure. Was just stretching my legs. Did you know how big this place really is?” he asked.
“Had no idea. How many people can this place sleep?”
“Looks like about thirty. There’s about fifteen or so private bunks and a barracks-like room with almost twenty more bunks,” Lucius replied.
“That could come in handy! Anyway, I’ve checked out Mr. Marshall, six ways from Sunday. Having an A.I. that can break into any database on the planet is an asset I could have used back in the day. With everything I’ve found, he appears to be exactly what he represented to us. In case he wants this Valerie Wyatt along, she’s just the kind of woman I would have sought out back in the day.”
Lucius nodded, “I thought the same thing about the mayor and her friend. Bernice’s niece is an extraordinary woman and Silas Washington is no slouch either. They have been the core management of the community. And the clever ways they have concealed their ‘no whites’ mission have been very successful. If Chris hadn’t come up with the G-wave we could very well be living down there in the same kind of community as Harmony.”
“I still prefer living in space. You can barely tell we’re not on Earth. Plus it’s that particular circumstance that appears to be driving this Aidan to want to join. While I’m thinking about it, how do you want to initiate First Contact, as Peanut keeps calling it?” she asked.
“What you said earlier seems to make sense. One of us can chat with him online. That will conceal our identities and capabilities initially, then we can add more reveals as we go along. This is completely new territory for all of us, but it may just work.”
Sydney asked, “So now it’s a matter of him changing aim of the laser from the colony to the station, right?”
“I’d say so. If we get to the point where we’re videoconferencing, I would like to talk to Bernice’s niece and Washington. Maybe they could be our agents insofar as seeking out candidates, maybe even recruit from the other communities,” suggested Lucius.
“I can see that. It’s something you want to talk about face to face. And I still want to see Aidan before we decide. The part I haven’t figured out is how do we pick anyone up? We know they can track our ships, so there’s no sneaking up on the planet. Have you given it any thought?”
“The shopping mission used three ships connected together and then dropping one off in Lake Michigan while the other two took off to lead anyone following us away. I don’t think that’s going to be particularly useful. And given that we want to try to get several hundred recruits off world, whatever we come up with must be pretty secure and repeatable. But as I sit here, I don’t know how,” Lucius confessed.
“They almost caught me when you and I were picked up. How was it out in Boston? I never asked.”
“Easy as pie. I was worried about having that pallet of cash discovered. I didn’t know how easy or hard it was going to be getting it into the jumper. I had never seen the ship up close, I had only seen the VW wagon. But no one showed up looking for us, so I sank the boat I motored out into the ocean,” explained Lucius. “I remember you being upset when you showed up at the colony, but I didn’t hear about any mishap in your pickup.”
“It wasn’t much to worry about, Angela had to outrun a couple of missiles fired by some jets, but she’s just way too good. She trained with pilots like them, and with a jumper she’s unbeatable. I wasn’t really paying attention, I was being hustled into a spacesuit and I was pretty upset about leaving John behind,” she explained.
“Lucius and Sydney, I am receiving a signal from an x-ray laser source located in the town of Harmony,” the A.I. announced.
“What is the message?” Sydney asked.
“It is the Fibonacci sequence from one to thirty-four.”
“Isn’t our boy clever!” said Lucius with a chuckle.
“He is, indeed. Should we map out a plan of attack? Maybe put together an outline of what to say?” Sydney suggested.
“Do you think we need one? Why not see what’s on his mind and go from there? But limit contact to five minutes.”
“Perfect. Everyone these days chats on their mobile devices and computers. Let’s go up to Ops and use one of the consoles there,” Sydney said, getting to her feet.
“Can’t wait,” Lucius said.
Why Can’t We Be Friends
“Madam President, we are detecting a signal coming from the space station being sent toward Earth by an x-ray band laser,” General Boise said as soon as she came on the line.
“And what is this signal saying, General?” she asked.
“Believe it or not, it’s sending out the value of Pi to ten decimal places.”
“Pi? First, a beacon sending out measured pulses beamed here from the colony, now Pi from the space station. It would appear that there’s someone here on Earth they want to communicate with. Is there any way to determine who may be receiving this signal?” asked Wilcox.
General Boise sighed. “Even though it’s being sent by laser, there’s still some scattering of the beam. We’re looking at an area in the center of the country that includes, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and maybe South Dakota. It would be easy enough to just concentrate on the center of this circle, Colorado, but it’s not a sure thing. If I were them, I would aim off center just to throw us off. Given what we’ve observed, they could be aiming for NORAD. The beam’s not very powerful, so it’s likely not a weapon, but it could be used as a laser sight just as we use for smart bombs and missiles,” suggested Boise.
“Given that they have what’s essentially a disintegration ray, why bother sending a missile or bomb?” asked Wilcox.
“Worst case? What if they have something along the lines of an antimatter bomb? They could evaporate Cheyenne Mountain. My experts say that as little as one kilo would have enough destructive force to create a crater deep enough that you’d never know the mountain was there. If they went up to fifty kilos, they could crack the Earth’s crust, essentially sending the planet into another ice age. We’ve seen no sign of their using antimatter up until now, but we cannot afford to discount the possibility.”
“Can we detect someone communicating with the colonists using high altitude surveillance? Scanning for a return signal from a ground-based installation?”
“Madam President, we’re looking at over a million square miles.”
“How long to conduct a search?”
“Weeks, months, ma’am. And what if they turn off the signal when we’re overhead? We could miss it by seconds and never know.”
“What about satellite surveillance? Can we task a satellite to hang in geosynchronous orbit?”
“I thought about that, Madam President. The only two satellites we still have in orbit with the right detectors don’t have the fuel to alter their trajectories to get into synchronous orbit over the center of the country. And if we task them to check the area when they’re in range, it’s still going to take months. If they get wind of the satellites, they can j
ust shut anything down when the birds are overhead, and as you know, there’s no way of getting new birds in orbit.”
“Okay. At this time all we can do is monitor their ships and keep an eye on that signal. Let me know if it begins to transmit anything other than Pi. Obviously, we’re out of any real options. Do what you can, General, and keep me posted.”
“Yes, Madam President,” he said, then hung up.
“Shit,” she pressed the intercom. “Nate, you busy?”
“Not too. What’s up?” he inquired.
“Something new from the colony, then the space station in lunar orbit.”
“Be right there,” he said.
When he arrived, he stopped at the liqueur cart and poured a drink before he sat down across from President Wilcox.
“One of those days?” she asked.
“Just one day, just once, I’d like to be the angry black man that I am,” Slade said with a rueful chuckle. “But enough about me, what’s up?”
“There’s a signal being beamed at the center of the country from the space station,” she explained.
“What kind of signal?”
“So far, just the number Pi to several decimal places. Boise thinks that we’ll probably never find who the signal is being beamed to.”
“But Pi? What’s that all about?” Slade asked.
“A carrier signal until there’s something to send? I have no idea. But what worries me is what could come next. We’re in new territory after the Pentagon incident. Here’s what I think is going on. I think there are agents for the colony who still live here. The question is why are they here and what might they do?” Wilcox replied.
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